Beginner help please, compiling to arz, 101 for dummies big thanks

If you get a ton of errors, I assume you never extracted the game’s arz files and therefore have none of the templates.

You need to set up AssetManager first, the modding guide tells you how

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ouh hardmod tips would be super, that way i can do cruci too, many thanks :hugs:

that’s part of the weird thing that almost made me tear out my hair mamba
i did extract the arz, and even modified the values i desired
i did setup asset manager, as per Elfe’s detailed instructions (tho already there i had deviation results, which weirded me out)

and still assetmanager toyed with me bigtime
… somehow i even got a 1kb arc file at one point :confounded:
i got write errors a bunch of times, so i put everything in the mod folder to not be read only (don’t think it was tho) - still got write errors
i got a “successful” arz at some point, but the value changes i had made wasn’t present/didn’t take efect
got a bunch of mid pack errors (don’t remember the specifics now) so it would just cancel,

but the most frustrating thing, as someone that has already no clue what they are doing, all those different things seemingly happened, despite me doing the exact same steps every time and just hitting build, - yet so many diff outcomes @_@

Posting the errors you get is a good start :slight_smile:

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ye i didn’t think about that yday as i just got frustrated on frustrated the more i tried/as time went by :sweat_smile:
like i mentioned the only error i specifically remember is the write error where it said at the end it just couldn’t write to the arz/location


This is this hard-modding trick I use.

1. First thing to is just making and building a simple custom mod with a change you’d like to do:
(you create new mod in Asset manager, import record, make some changes and build)

2. If you want to hard mod it so that it’s in Main Campaign and Crucible, first you need to think what archive / database contains the files you changed to do the trick from 3. on it:

  • for example Skeletons are from 1st expansion so I need to change

  • but Blade Arc are from base game so you need to change this:
    Screenshot%20(426)

  • can be multiple arz files

  • in Asset Manager sometimes it’s not where you’d think it is
    for example summoning Wind Devils is not from base game (database.arz) but they’re actually from GDX1.arz and you need to do a trick on GDX1.arz to make Wind Devils permanent even though Shaman class is from the base game.

    $ find . -iname *squall1*
    ./database/records/skills/playerclass06/squall1.dbr
    ./mods/gdx1/database/records/skills/playerclass06/squall1.dbr

  • other option is just trial and error and doing the trick (3.) i.e. first on database.arz, then gdx1.arz then gdx2.arz (doing the trick doesn’t spoil the file if it doesn’t contain the file you’re changing)

3. Now this is the trick is:

  • you go back where your built your custom mod

  • you delete it and put appropriate arz here, for skellies it’s GDX1.arz but for Blitz is database.arz for example

  • you rename it to the name of the custom mod, here it’s aggressive_skellies
    (see the increased size of aggressive_skellies.arz):

  • now you open aggressive_skellies mod in Asset Manager and click Build
    (check that Date Modified changed, although it will change even if you incorrectly chose i.e. database.arz which doesn’t have files with skellies instead of GDX1.arz so it’s just a way to tell something happend not that you chose .arz correctly)

    btw if you get the following message

it’s important to click No to All because otherwise Asset Manager is going to strip renamed GDX1 to just skeleton which is not what we want

so we have our modified GDX1.arz

We rename it back to GDX1.arz

and replace the appropriate game file from here:

Now we hardmodded aggressive skeletons and we can even run custom mods on top of it.
(of course if they change stuff we hardmodded then we won’t see out hardmodded changes)

As I already said, If you change stuff from database.arz do do trick on it , if you change GDX2 you do trick on it, sometimes maybe you need to do the trick on multiple archives and sometimes which archives should be used it’s not intuitive.

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thanks again tq, gonna give it a try now
i’ll report back if i manage to screw up even with such step by step instructions :sweat_smile:

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SUCCESS!!! image
can report i have (so far seemingly) hard modded non-arthritis mode wind devils :triumph: :bowing_man:

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thank you so very very much for these tips
and the step by step “ikea” instructions :sweat_smile: making it just what a clumsy sod like me can handle :+1: :blush:

Weird, if this works then I have no idea why building a regular mod would not work for you. This is way more work and dbrs than a regular mod would have been.

Did you simply not load your mod in game ?

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no i did, like i said from the succesful “non-1kb arz” my changes just had no effect
(tho now i understand why, as tqfan illustrated shammy skills are from gdx1 not regular database)

tho all the other stuff/erros/mishaps still confuses me :sweat_smile: - tho with some thorough handholding we arrived at a happy end afterall

Not sure why the skills being from gdx1 makes any difference when building a regular mod. Whatever is in the mod overrides vanilla and both expansions.

You might have started out with the wrong skill dbr, but it still should override what is in gdx1.

To avoid having to hunt down the right skill in 3 places I copy gdx1 over vanilla and gdx2 over both, then whatever I find in the dir is the correct dbr to use

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Not sure what you mean but way more work than modifying an existing mod with your changes? That’s OP’s original intent.

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Hard modding is way more work than a regular mod, given your description

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I’m talking hard-modding permanent wind devil + running custom mod on top of it
vs
modifing existing custom packed mod (i.e. Dawn of Masteries) from the beginning
so that it also contains permanent wind devils

Not hard mod vs regular mod.

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i can only speak for my own very amateur’ish and clumsy encounter (and granted the detailed step by step guide made a big difference)
but it took me hours getting absolutely nowhere yday, in what i assumed would be the simplest form of mod to be made (just changing a basic value in 1 place)
and it ofc left me frustrated as i messed it up all the time and everything kept going wrong despite the standard guides on the forum (granted that also speaks a fair bit to my own ineptitude on such things)
compared to that, it took me like 10minutes to get this hardmod up and running - again obvious big deal being tq’s very handholding instructions :bowing_man:

i’ve no doubt regular modding should be way simpler/quicker, but it would, at least from my encounter, require a little more knowhow than just point black starter attempt
guess because when you don’t know what you’re actually doing, even the simplest things become complicated like quantum physics :rofl:

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I’m similar, I haven’t gotten used to ArchieveTool from command line yet :thinking:
and building Dawn of Masteries from what I’ve read requires you to also download templates,
building / packing still gives some errors.

Of course in the end if doing more complicated changes / merging two mods
or if mod overwrites your changes, then you have to modify the mod.

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I am with you but coming from the other direction… if you managed the hard mod, how on earth did you run into issues before ? :wink:

The hard mod contains a lot more files, so if anything went wrong with the regular mod, there is no way the hard mod would work either.
Or put the other way around, if you managed the hard mod, the regular one should be easier and also work, as it literally is a tiny subset of the hard mod

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like i said i’ve no idea what happened the times it went wrong, getting 1kb arz (or even the arc @_@), or the errors, let alone the write errors
and as far as it not working when i got the right size arz, i’m guessing it mattered somehow that i was extracting resources from and to database instead gdx1, somehow, - who knows what might else have gone wrong along the steps yday :sweat:

@mamba Hey could you tell me if I can hardmod in the following way?
Or is it maybe unnecessarily complicated / won’t work.

  • first I make a soft-mod SOME_MOD with some changes in Asset Manager and build it

  • then I make a copy of unpacked GDX2 folder and overwrite it with copy of SOME_MOD folder with changed files

    • I delete SOME_MOD.arz and Resourcese from it though
  • now in this copy of GDX2 are appropriate files, even if they are originally from GDX1 / base game

  • now I pack this folder from command line to GDX2.arz and replace the original to hard mod

so basically I always replace only GDX2.arz with this method



I thought also of doing it without command line and building in Asset Manager by copying Working/mods/GDX2/database unpack files to Working/mods/SOME_MOD/database, then make changes / import potentially not-existing records from GDX1 / Base game to it in Asset Manager and then rebuild the whole SOME_MOD = GDX2.arz + CHANGES in Asset Manager.

[edit] ^ I tested this 2nd method and it works nicely, you just have to w8 a couple minutes for the whole GDX2.arz to compile

@Gnomish_Inquisition with this method you don’t need to think whether do “the hardmod trick” at what .arz file (or at multiple). You do it always on GDX2.arz

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